Нормандия: Французский океанский лайнер

Ocean liner

SS Normandie was a French ocean liner built in Saint Nazaire, France, for the French Line Compagnie Générale Transatlantique (CGT). She entered service in 1935 as the largest and fastest passenger ship afloat, crossing the Atlantic in a record 4.14 days, and remains the most powerful steam turbo electric propelled passenger ship ever built. Normandies novel design and lavish interiors led many to consider her the greatest of ocean liners, and she would go on to heavily influence the French arm of the Streamline Moderne design movement (called the style paquebot, or "ocean liner style"). Despite this, she was not a commercial success and relied partly on government subsidy to operate. Another poster, by Albert Sébille, showed the interior layout in a cutaway diagram 15 feet (5 m) long. This poster is displayed in the Musée national de la Marine in Paris.

Work by the Société Anonyme des Chantiers de Penhoët began on the unnamed flagship on 26 January 1931 at Saint Nazaire, soon after the stock market crash of 1929. While the French continued construction, the competing White Star Line's planned Oceanic which quickly cancelled and Cunard's which was put on hold. French builders also ran into difficulty and had to ask for government money; this subsidy was questioned in the press. Still, the ship's construction was followed by newspapers and national interest was deep, as she was designed to represent France in the nation state contest of the great liners and was built in a French shipyard using French parts. The growing hull in Saint Nazaire had no formal designation except "T 6" ("T" for "Transat", an alternate name for the French Line, and "6" for "6th"), the contract name. Many names were suggested including Doumer, after Paul Doumer, the recently assassinated President of France; and originally, La Belle France. Finally Normandie was chosen. In France, boat prefixes properly depend on the boat name's gender, but non sailors mostly use the masculine form, inherited from the French terms for boat, which can be "paquebot", "navire", "bateau", or "bâtiment", but English speakers refer to boats as feminine ("she's a beauty") and the CGT carried many rich American customers. The CGT wrote that their boat was to be called simply "Normandie", preceded by neither "le" nor "la" (French masculine/feminine for "the") to avoid any confusion. On 29 October 1932 – three years to the day after the stock market crash – Normandie was launched in front of two hundred thousand spectators. The 27,567 ton hull that slid into the river Loire was the largest launched and the wave washed up the shoreline and over several hundred spectators, but with no injury. The ship was dedicated by Madame Marguerite Lebrun, wife of Albert Lebrun, the President of France. She was outfitted until early 1935, her interiors, funnels, engines, and other fittings put in to make her into a working vessel. Finally, in May 1935, Normandie was ready for trials, which were watched by reporters. The superiority of Yourkevitch's hull was visible; hardly a wave was created off the bulbous bow. The ship reached a top speed of and performed an emergency stop from that speed in
In addition to hull design which let her attain speed at far less power than other big liners, Normandie had a turbo electric transmission, with turbo generators and electric propulsion motors built by Alsthom of Belfort. The rudder frame, including the 125 ton cast steel connecting rod, was produced by Škoda Works in Czechoslovakia. Normandie had a significant cost. By the time of her maiden voyage, she had cost 812 million francs, then equal to $53.5 million (equivalent to $53.5 in 1935 is equivalent to about <calculated amount> in recent years million in ).

Normandies luxurious interiors were designed in Art Déco and Streamline Moderne style by architect Pierre Patout, one of the founders of the Art Deco style. Many sculptures and wall paintings made allusions to Normandy, the province of France for which the ship was named. Drawings and photographs show a series of vast public rooms of great elegance. Her voluminous interior spaces were made possible by having the funnel uptakes split to pass along the sides of the ship, rather than straight upward. French architect Roger Henri Expert was in charge of the overall decorative scheme. Most of the public space was devoted to first class passengers, including the dining room, first class lounge, grill room, first class swimming pool, theatre and winter garden. The first class swimming pool featured staggered depths, with a shallow training beach for children. The children's dining room was decorated by Jean de Brunhoff, who covered the walls with Babar the Elephant and his entourage. The interiors were filled with grand perspectives, spectacular entryways, and long, wide staircases. First class suites were given unique designs by select designers. The most luxurious accommodations were the Deauville and Trouville apartments, featuring dining rooms, baby grand pianos, multiple bedrooms, and private decks. Normandies first class dining hall was the largest room afloat. At 305 feet (93 m), it was longer than the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles, 46 feet (14 m) wide, and 28 feet (9 m) high. Passengers entered through 20 feet (6 m) doors adorned with bronze medallions by artist Raymond Subes. The room could seat 700 at 157 tables, with Normandie serving as a floating promotion for the most sophisticated French cuisine of the period. As no natural light could enter it was illuminated by twelve tall pillars of Lalique glass flanked by 38 matching columns along the walls. These, with chandeliers hung at each end of the room, earned the Normandie the nickname "Ship of Light" (similar to Paris as the "City of Light"). A popular feature was the café grill, which would be transformed into a nightclub. Adjoining the café grill was the first class smoking room, which was paneled in large murals depicting ancient Egyptian life. The ship also had indoor and outdoor pools, a chapel, and a theatre which could double as a stage and cinema. The machinery of Normandies top deck and forecastle was integrated within the ship, concealing it and releasing nearly all the exposed deck space for passengers. As such it was the only ocean liner to have a regulation sized open air tennis court on board. The air conditioner units were concealed along with the kennels inside the third, dummy, funnel.

Normandies maiden voyage was on 29 May 1935. At Le Havre she took aboard 812 Passengers: 467 First Class Passengers, 244 Tourist Class and 101 Third Class. 50,000 people saw her off at Le Havre on what was hoped would be a record breaking crossing. At Southampton she took aboard an additional 195 Passengers: 122 First Class Passengers, 53 Tourist Class and 20 Third Class. Her combined total was 1,007 passengers. First Class was booked at two thirds capacity with 589, Tourist Class was half booked at 293, while Third Class was at less than a quarter capacity with only 121. She reached New York City after four days, three hours and two minutes, taking away the Blue Riband from the Italian liner This brought great pride for the French, who had not won the distinction before. Under the command of Captain René Pugnet, Normandies average on the maiden voyage was and on the eastbound crossing to France, she averaged over , breaking records in both directions. During the maiden voyage, the CGT refused to predict that their ship would win the Blue Riband. In August 1936, Queen Mary captured the Blue Riband, averaging , starting a fierce rivalry. Another of the CGT's greatest triumphs also turned out to be one of Normandies greatest flaws: her décor. The ship's slick and modern Art Deco interiors proved to be somewhat intimidating and uncomfortable for her travellers, with some claiming that interiors gave them headaches. It was also here that Queen Mary triumphed over her French rival. Although also decorated in an Art Deco style, Queen Mary was more restrained in her appointments and was not as radical as Normandie, and proved ultimately to be more popular with travellers. Normandie also inspired the architecture and design of the Normandie Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The hotel's roof sign is one of the two signs that adorned the top deck of Normandie but were removed from it during an early refitting. It also inspired the nickname 'The Normandie' given to the International Savings Society Apartments in Shanghai, one of the most fashionable residential buildings during the city's pre revolutionary heyday and home to several stars of China's mid 20th century film industry. Normandie name also may have inspired that of The Normandy apartment building in New York City. Items from Normandie were sold at a series of auctions after her demise, and many pieces are considered valuable Art Deco treasures today. The rescued items include the ten large dining room door medallions and fittings, and some of the individual Jean Dupas glass panels that formed the large murals mounted at the four corners of her Grand Salon. One entire corner is preserved at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The dining room door medallions are now on the exterior doors of Our Lady of Lebanon Maronite Cathedral in Brooklyn. Also surviving are some examples of the 24,000 pieces of crystal, some from the massive Lalique torchères that adorned her dining salon. Also extant are some of the room's table silverware, chairs, and gold plated bronze table bases. Custom designed suite and cabin furniture as well as original artwork and statues that decorated the ship, or were built for use by the CGT aboard Normandie, also survive today. The eight foot high, 1,000 pound bronze figural sculpture of a woman named "La Normandie", which was at the top of the grand stairway from the first class smoking room up to the grill room café, was found in a New Jersey scrapyard in 1954 and was purchased for the then new Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida. It was first displayed outside in the parterre gardens near the formal pool and later indoors near the then Fontainebleau Hilton's spa. In 2001, the hotel sold the statue to Celebrity Cruises, which placed it in the main dining room of their new ship Celebrity Summit. The cruise ship also had a separate Normandie Restaurant, designed to reflect the interiors of the liner, and containing gold lacquered panels from the Normandie's First Class Smoking Room. The Normandie Restaurant and associated ocean liner decor was removed in 2015. The statue "La Paix", which stood in the First Class Dining Room, now stands in the Pinelawn Memorial Park, a cemetery in New York. The three note chime steam whistle, after salvage, was sent to the Bethlehem Steel factory in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where it was used to announce shift changes. It later resided in the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and was used in their New Year's Eve steam whistle ceremony until 2014. This whistle is now at SUNY Maritime's Fort Schuyler. Pieces from Normandie occasionally appear on the BBC television series Antiques Roadshow and also on its American counterpart. A public lounge and promenade was created from some of the panels and furniture from Normandie in the Hilton Chicago. The dining room "Normandie" on the Carnival Cruise ship Carnival Pride was also inspired by the ocean liner, per the ship's designer Joseph Farcus. Though not shown explicitly, "the majestic form of the Normandie" appears in the Tintin story, The Broken Ear.